You receive a "Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close" error message when you try to start Word 2002 or Word 2003 (286839)

SYMPTOMS

After a document that is named Normal.dot is placed in the User templates (or Workgroup templates) folder and you try to start Microsoft Word, you may receive the following error message:

Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

To view the details of the error signature, click the link in the To see what data this error report contains, click here error dialog box. The following error signature appears:

AppName       AppVer        ModName       ModVer        Offset
--------------------------------------------------------------------
winword.exe   10.0.4009.0   winword.exe   10.0.4009.0   00144ad3

You are prompted to send the error report to Microsoft.

After you click Send Error Report or you click Don't Send, you receive the following message: Word has detected a problem with the existing normal.dot. Would you like to create a new normal.dot?

CAUSE

This issue may occur if the global template (Normal.dot) is actually a Word document named Normal.dot. When Word tries to use the document as its default global template, you receive the error message that is mentioned in the "Symptoms" section.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, click Yes on the message that follows the error message:

Word has detected a problem with the existing normal.dot. Would you like to create a new normal.dot?

After you do this, a new Normal.dot template file is created and Word starts as expected.

MORE INFORMATION

A Word document (.doc) renamed with a Word template (.dot) extension does not open in Word because template files contain a file format that is different from that of document files.